The world is changing fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow. Through today's networking and communication systems many traits once tacitly associated with leading U.S. research institutions are now found in universities once considered in the backwaters of research-intensive entities. Places once considered isolated are no longer so. The BBRC has itself been involved in the explosive development of its biomedical research enterprise. To enhance its competitiveness, the Center is proposing to develop a new resource to advance more swiftly the research contributions of its faculty members and enhance the training and education of its students: the establishment of a new Core Facility, the Community Engagement Core (CEC). Past initiatives in the BBRC for dealing with issues of inter-institutional welfare and services clearly have boosted the capacity of its Research Clusters to achieve their goals. Creating the CEC is taking a major step to strengthen the capacity of BBRC research - and research in the University at large - by creating an infrastructure and model for moving basic science discoveries toward applications and for developing an environment to improve the training of students who will help define the 21st century biomedical workforce. The CEC is envisioned to fortify a new a BBRC focus on inter-institutional cooperation to address health-related problems in the Paso del Norte region. Envisioned is the development of successful academic and administrative paradigms to build regional collaborations and which will be shared with other potential collaborators along the 2000 mile Mexico-U.S. border, and borders beyond. A goal is to use the BBRC network as the catalyst for a permanent administrative infrastructure dedicated to support substantive interinstitutional collaborations. Minimal funding requested from NIHMD for CEC will be for start-up. Complementary funds will be sought from the University and State and other outside sources to advance development of proposed CEC activities. Emerging research discoveries seeking translational endpoints and research training programs provide major stimuli to develop this needed infrastructure. All resources and administration in the BBRC started with monetary support from the NIHMD, NIH and other U.S. Agencies and foundations. That initial support has been highly leveraged to provide resources from multiple resources to support biomedical research. As with other Cores and Research Clusters, CEC projects programs and activities that become adopted as permanent infrastructure are expected to be of a quality or strategic nature that ensures their national or international competitiveness for extramural funding and for local institutional investment. Thus, the CEC will be characterized by excellent, sustainable and independently funded academic programs that are initiated through the RCMI grant. In achieving all its aims, it is evident that there is a need for the BBRC to vastly expand its network of community contacts, collaborators and partners in order to add needed resources to the Center. In short there is a need for greater community engagement. The function of the new CEC is to spearhead a community engagement effort that becomes part of the BBRC scientific fabric. To lead the new Core the BBRC recruited colleagues with expertise in public health research who have extensive experience in building community relations and networks to promote healthy living. In short, they are behavioral scientists that know how to build communication networks in communities in general and the El Paso community specifically so that ideas and information flow effectively between the University and outside community. Clearly the BBRC will enter into this new venture carefully and anticipates learning as it progresses, but sees this venture as a necessary addition to current resources needed to develop comprehensive outreach measures to effectively address disease disparities.